Governmental Schizophrenia
It is rather strange how on the one hand most governments want their people to be healthy and spend a lot of money on encouraging it, and simultaneously subsidize foods that may play a rather big role in rising obesity rates.
Subsidies For Fast Food?
Already six years ago an article in Environmental Health Perspectives highlighted the relationship between low prices for unhealthy foods at fast food restaurants and supermarkets and the governmental subsidies of the crops – corn, wheat and soybeans – used for producing these:
Compounding the problem, says Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition at the Carolina Population Center of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is that fattening foods are supported whereas healthy fare isn’t. “We put maybe one-tenth of one percent of our dollar that we put into subsidizing and promoting foods through the Department of Agriculture into fruits and vegetables,” he says. As a result, the price gap between high-sugar, high-fat foods and more nutritionally valuable fruits and vegetables is artificially large. That means in supermarkets and restaurants, red meats, sugar-and fat-loaded products, and fast foods not only appear to be the best buys but in proportion to even moderate salaries are downright cheap.
Burgers Cheaper, Vegetables More Expensive
Want some numbers? According to a study published in the journal Health Affairs, between 1990 and 2007 the price of a McDonald’s quarter-pounder with cheese fell by 5.44 percent, while between 1997 and 2003 the price of fruit and vegetables, which are not subsidized, rose by 17 percent.
And it doesn’t only happen in the US, it’s similar in the EU and Germany: The government spends tons of money on educating people about obesity and still we Germans get fatter. The only difference to the US is that around here it’s not directly the above crops that are subsidized, but that most money goes to large producers that mainly cultivate these cheap crops.
It’s Not The Farmers, It’s The Concept
I’m not against subsidizing small farmers. These people work very hard for little and have to struggle against farming giants that try to squeeze them out of the market. But why not change where we put the money? As it is now one hand undoes what the other does.
Picture courtesy of Parker Michael Knight.
12 Comments
You always make great points, sir. I very much look forward to what you will bring up next.
I don’t understand as well as you what is going on, but it seems like they put the almighty dollar before people’s health. I’d like to see what political contributions Mcdonalds, Coca-cola, etc. make. When the corporations who need it the least get subsidized over the small farmers who need it the most…makes me want to scream.
How can you calculate the cost we pay with medical bills and diabetes and obesity?
This isn’t strictly related – but in terms of the “paying off” idea, this article I read a couple of weeks ago highlights points i’d never thought of at the benefits of offering gastric bypass en-mass to the obese:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/health-10877140
“It is cost-effective, with gastric bypass paying for itself within three-and-a-half years due to reduced drug costs and hospital admissions, and this is before we take into account the individual’s renewed productivity, and benefit – rather than burden – to the economy. ”
As for the main article – here in the UK it is nonsense that healthier food is more expensive. Much more often than not it’s simply less appealing – the number of markets and small vegetable shops dotted around, there is always a cheap, healthier option. What IS more expensive are packets of ‘ready-made salad’ or prestine organic tomatoes imported from the other side of the world, etc. etc.. And fruit and vegetables in season (from as simple as apples to luxurious as strawberries) can be bought very cheaply across the entire country.
The problem isn’t cost; once more it’s people being overly choosy.
I can’t help but think that that use gastric bypasses is like combating fire with fire, while the heart of the problem is not to start the fire in the first place.
I don’t know the prices in the UK, but I believe you, and as the UK is ranked #2 in the article I linked, we have to look elsewhere. Is it being choosy or is there something else that makes the bad alternatives more attractive? To my mind come convenience, advertising and, related to that, our built-in preference of foods that yield high energy, which was made sense in a time when food was scarce.
Thanks for the friendly words, Sean!
Yes, it is not as our governments aren’t aware of these discrepancies, but there is a whole world of lobbying going on in Washington, Brussels, Berlin, Paris, London and whatever other capital in the world you can think of. Just today’s news will give you dozens of examples. And these lobbyists have a multitude of ways to get their way: They know politicians want to be reelected and need money for their campaigns, they know that most politicians can’t know every detail of every topic they have to decide on, so they bombard them with one-sided information positive to what they want, and they can pour tons of money into swinging public opinion, which then puts politicians under a lot of pressure if they have to make a right, but unpopular, decision.
Something I find puzzling: Why do governments preach against obesity, when healthy people depend less on medical attention? Isn’t the drug industry extremely beneficial in terms of collecting taxes? And if so, why do obese/sick people cost the U.S. billions in healthcare every year? It almost seems like it evens out. How are WE the people paying for sick people’s care when THEY are the ones paying. Another way to look at it is that because of this, it could only be beneficial for governments. I apologize for going back and forth with this, It’s kinda hard for me to put in words.
Could you imagine the P.R. nightmare that would come out of governments not at least acknoweledging the obesity epidemic in a negative fashion? After the release of “Super Size Me”, Many Americans saw fast food (and other unhealthy industries) as “bad”, but did little to change their personal habits reguarding them, let alone their commercial ones. Once the problem was put into light, politicians had to look like they were doing something, rather than fixing the problem (and creating another one, which you pointed out at the top of your post).
“Politicians care more about votes than people”
-Me, 10 seconds ago
Yep, it is exactly as you say and as I said in my reply to Combat, that behavior directly hurts the welfare of country – and most polticians probably know it. Therefore something is going wrong – but how can it be righted?
The sick only make money for the healthcare industry and the taxes they pay don’t make up for the losses. Let’s take an example: The government sends you through school free of charge, it has therefore invested in you. The you get a college education, which you have either paid for yourself or, as in some countries, was also paid for by the government, which would indebt you further. The only way for your country to get its investment back is if you are productive: Have a job, pay taxes and have enough money to buy stuff, which in return ensures that other people keep their jobs.
If you got that education, but then became chronically sick the invested money and the other effects would be lost and if you government finds it unethical to let its sick just die, it also has to pay for the healthcare costs.
I can imagine they are subsided partly it ties in with corn & soy- oil for frying, sugars from corn (dextrose and maltose) and cattle feed to hamburgers further down the line.
Of course. If the beginning of the chain wasn’t as heavily subsidized, meat would be more expensive.
“The day the only motivation a politician has is to go down in history is the day your government will make the right decisions” is a little quote I’m working on perfecting.
The subsidizing of the food industry in the US is but one example of the insanity that occurs when there’s too much corporate influence in politics.
“General Electric, which generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, ended up owing nothing to the IRS. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion. Big Oil giant Exxon Mobil, which last year reported a record $45.2 billion profit, paid the most taxes of any corporation, but none of it went to the IRS”
I mean, no sane government would ever allow that! These companies pay taxes in other countries, but not the US. The only way that makes any sense whatsoever, is corruption.
Yes, Msychly, they know to play the system to a t. But what to do? As John Adams said: “While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill – little better understood, little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago”.